Haikus: From Me All The Way To You

Seeing as how I’m midway through a graduate degree in poetry (really? what are you going to do with that?!), Rousculp & White at Speedvagen here decided it would only be to all of our best interests to combine the awesome worlds of cyclocross and poetry. I couldn’t agree more. As a result, throughout the season I’ll be posting cyclocross related/inspired poems, mostly in the form and/or experimental phase and/or permutations of the haiku.

Generally speaking, haiku usually arrives in its most well-known form of 5-7-5, with the numbers referring to the amount of syllables in each line of the poem. The so-called essence of haiku is “cutting,” which is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji (“cutting word”) between them. An indication of season is also another essential of haiku. There’s more, of course, and haiku can spin off in any number of directions; for all intents and purposes here, however, we’re going wild with this. And by wild I mean experimental and against the grain, I mean counterculture and grit; I mean ‘cross.

Haiku is often typecast and pocketed as the peaceful, calm form of the poetry world. How nice. My aim is to show you its more feral moments, how it can be the perfect partner to ‘cross, and how it can, literally, play in the mud with the best of them.

See? Haiku, and the individuals who write it, can subvert and be more subtly subversive than you might assume.

The following consists of four haikus (& their titles, as indicated with italics) strung together to create one experimental haiku strand. To note: line spacing can be awkward on Wordpress; the following, more or less, reflects the form of the haiku as it was intended, minus proper line spacing.